Katie MarsalMac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
People familiar with the ongoing development of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard say Apple is gearing up to provide some developers with a new build of the next-gen OS in the near term.
The target build is said to be 10A286, which could change at any time. Regardless of the build, an identically numbered beta of Snow Leopard Server should arrive in tandum.
Apple last equipped Apple Developer Connection members with build 10A261 in early February. Around that time it was reported that Snow Leopard would include Core Location and Multi-Touch frameworks for third-party developers, and also deliver more intuitive printer driver delivery.
Specific to the 10A261 build were a handful of visual tweaks, such as a Put Back option in the Finder and the ability to drill down into stacks via a new grid-view interface, each of which were documented in a series of screenshots.
While calls from Apple legal have marred various reports on those features, including AppleInsider's, readers point out that several videos covering the design tweaks live on over at YouTube, like the one below.
iWeb
Also in the works, and reportedly undergoing internal testing, is iWeb 3.0.1. The update is believed to address issues with publishing iWeb pages to MobileMe and FTP, which has been one of the largest sources of complaints about the new Web editor that shipped last month as part of iLife '09.
One thread running since late January concerns FTP publishing errors where a test worked properly but the publish failed. Others have reported issues with pictures not appearing correctly while still others have struggled with uploading for a month only to discover their sleep settings were putting the computer to sleep before it could finish the upload.
Apple Remote Desktop & VoiceOver
Meanwhile, two other software updates growing closer to release, though very little information is know about them at this time. The first is Apple Remote Desktop 3.3, which is reportedly code-named Hook. Somewhat further behind is said to be a significant update to VoiceOver.
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29 Comments
What I really want is the ability to right click stack items, without the need to install anything on top of SL. That feature is a no-brainer.
I'm interested in Snow Leopard for sure and will buy it on day one, but I suspect Snow Leopard OSX Server will be feature rich enough to take another slice out of the Windows server market.
It should be noted that the latest Wifi update for Intel has helped somewhat but there are still significant issues depending on the network you reside on. I still get the intermittent scanning for network problem on certain WiFi access points. It it better but still not 100%.
As to Snow Leopard all I can say is that I hope it comes quickly. The number one thing I'm hoping for is GPU acceleration of video play back. That should make a huge difference on my early 2008 MBP. If they don't implement I will be very disappointed with Apple. Not that Apple is in my good graces right now but I suspect that I will get over it.
Even if the iMac update was lackluster I'm starting to warm up to one of their new networking appliances. It is good to see that Apple has been steadily updating all their software even on embedded devices. Software is one of the good things to look at this year as Apple has been doing well here. Everything I have, my MBP, MobileMe and Iphone, are all working better than when I started out with the stuff in 2008.
Dave
It seems like the Snow Leopard builds are slowly starting to pick up the pace. Maybe I'm wrong???
Me too, from what I'm reading about Snow Leopard I like. A smaller footprint, more stable and faster, I will be buying it day one.
I want to upgrade my iWeb '08 (Real Estate website) to '09 just for the FTP capability. A simple click rather than opening Fetch and dragging and dropping, but Apple's iWeb '09 support forums are awash with supposed problems using this feature.
I'll wait till I see a fix. I bet we see an iWeb '09 FTP fix before the SL release.
Thanks for the info AI, saves a lot of unnecessary headaches!
Chris